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Re:U.S. Incarceration and Crime Rates Continue to Fall in Ta... by rayiner on Friday December 30, 2016 @01:53PM (#13286305)
There are not millions of people being held for offenses only involving marijuana: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf (page 2).

There's about 95,000 people in federal prison with a drug offense as their most serious charge. About 11,500 of those charges involved primarily marijuana. (The overwhelming majority of that is for trafficking, not possession.)

Rolling Stone estimated about 40,000 people in prison for convictions primarily involving marijuana, with about half of those involving marijuana alone: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/lists/top-10-marijuana-m....

That is of course not to say that justice, for a few tens of thousands of people isn't an important thing! Though I hesitate a little bit to put trafficking in the same "justice" category as using. It's generally accepted that the government has much more leeway to control what is sold in the market than to control what people do with their bodies.

Re:U.S. Incarceration and Crime Rates Continue to Fall in Ta... by nodamage on Friday December 30, 2016 @02:19PM (#13286575)
It's pretty misleading to look only at federal inmates as they're a relatively small percentage of the overall prison population. There are currently 189,520 total federal inmates (https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/population_statistics.j...) out of the total 2,173,800 incarcerated individuals (as per original article) in the US. Probably better to look for a figure that includes state prisons and local jails as well.

Edit: here's a handy infographic: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2016.html

Re:U.S. Incarceration and Crime Rates Continue to Fall in Ta... by rayiner on Friday December 30, 2016 @04:38PM (#13287686)
My post mentions both federal (about 11,500) and federal + state (about 20,000-40,000). The reason for mentioning federal is because BJS has data for marijuana versus other drug offenses for the federal system.

Note that while only a small proportion of the overall prison population is in federal prison, a much larger proportion of drug convicts are in federal prison.

Re:U.S. Incarceration and Crime Rates Continue to Fall in Ta... by 1_2__3 on Friday December 30, 2016 @02:29PM (#13286671)
So if you're right then doesn't that mean that half of all federal inmates are there for marijuana possession?
Re:U.S. Incarceration and Crime Rates Continue to Fall in Ta... by Spare_account on Friday December 30, 2016 @02:47PM (#13286841)
From the grandfather post to yours:

"There's about 95,000 people in federal prison with a drug offense as their most serious charge. About 11,500 of those charges involved primarily marijuana. (The overwhelming majority of that is for trafficking, not possession.)"

So no, your statement is not correct. If we take 'overwhelming majority' of 11,500 as 60%, that would leave ~5000 prisoners whose 'most serious charge' is possession of marijuana. Or about 2.5% of the federal inmate population (all this assuming that the figures quoted are correct, I didn't source them myself).

Re:U.S. Incarceration and Crime Rates Continue to Fall in Ta... by nodamage on Friday December 30, 2016 @02:45PM (#13286831)
Drug offenses, not marijuana possession specifically.
Re:U.S. Incarceration and Crime Rates Continue to Fall in Ta... by r00fus on Friday December 30, 2016 @02:17PM (#13286561)
Don't a lot of these convicted end up in state or local prisons ?